Doreen Klassen

Doreen Helen Klassen moved to Corner Brook, NL in fall 1999 for an eight-month contract to teach folklore and anthropology at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland’s west coast campus, and retired from that position in spring 2019. She had previously taught music for 30 years (piano, theories, pedagogy, history, etc) until she fell asleep during a piano lesson and decided to change careers! Since 1991, her research as an anthropologist has taken her to Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mexico and Belize, where she has studied women’s autobiographical and imaginative storytelling. In fall 2000, she was appointed organist/choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Corner Brook, building on a career as a church musician that had begun in a Mennonite church in Winkler, MB in 1959. Currently, she also oversees a Choral Scholars Programme at the Cathedral together with the program’s founder, Dr. Jennifer Matthews, and liturgist/cantor Fr Lynn Braye. It was her involvement with St. Luke’s Anglican Parish in Harare, Zimbabwe (1992-93) and participation in the musical life and Stephen Ministry of Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Wayne, IN (1997-99), that persuaded her to become part of the Anglican liturgical tradition.